© 2008

Backing Up and Archiving Your Memories


The question used to be, "If your house was on fire, what would you take with you?" Most people would answer their family photo album (assuming the family is safe of course). Now everything is digital and there are far more numerous ways to lose your photographs then a fire, yet few people take the necessary precautions to back up their data. Common reasons are my baby is keeping me up all night as it is, my toddler pooped on the carpet so I need to clean that up first and my kids are eating me out of house and home. Having had numerous hard drives fail on me, I take a very practical approach to backing up data. First let me make a distinction between data backups and data archiving, both of which are important. Data backups protects against catastrophes whereas archiving is moving data off your computer to make space for even more stuff, but doesn't necessarily make a copy of the data.

  • Keep it simple (even if the diagram doesn't look it)
  • Keep a schedule
  • Keep it safe
Picture 1
Keep it Simple. There's a ton of backup software and storage options. I like to keep things dead simple so that I don't have to keep track of things, to minimize the points of failure and to ensure 20 years from now I can get to my data. My desktop has four hard drive slots and so I regularly copy all my professional work over to a separate drive (HD4A or HD4B in the diagram above). This is simple in two ways. First there is no dependency on backup software. What software did you use 20 years ago that you still use today? Right. If you use software (like the cheesy stuff that ships with external hard drives), what is the probability that it will work 20 years from now when you want to retrieve your family photos? Second, the above process has little dependency on the storage medium itself. I store my information directly onto SATA drive (i.e. a standard hard drive). It's a standard interface and simplest means to get data. There is no dependency on an additional power supply (like many external drives), a RAID card/software, doesn't scratch or deteriorate (e.g. DVD, CDs) and is accessible by multiple operating systems. The entire process is fast - 640GB of data (about 50,000 high resolution negatives) can be copied over in about two hours. That's longer than sophisticated software that attempts to sync only changed files (which I've had issues with from time to time) but is far less error prone and can be completed while you play with the kids.

Keep a Schedule. Just like your baby's nap or feeding schedule, you need to have a regular schedule to help keep track of everything. My files are centralized using a source control software (like OS X's Time Travel on steroids). This allows real time syncing of multiple machines if multiple people have to work on the same files or if I need to transfer files to a laptop.

Keep it Safe. At the end of each month, I put the HD4A drive in a safe deposit box and grab HD4B drive or vice versa. At some point they'll fill up and I'll buy two more drives. The point is that one of the backup drives must always be offsite. If at some point those drives fill up, I buy another pair. If I ever need the data on those drives, I just slide them in my machine and have complete access to it. Every month or two, I backup the most important business files, personal images and folders to a data center in Utah. This protects against the meteor hitting my city scenario, but frankly, my data is probably the least of my concerns at that point.

Some No No's.
  1. Don't bother archiving photos to DVD (or CD). They just don't hold enough, DVDs are easily scratched and it takes forever to back them up or to find your data again.
  2. Don't bother with RAID or NAS. If you know what either of those are, then you'll also know that it's another point of failure. I looked at the ReadyNAS and Drobo which are great solutions, but thought to myself. "Will these companies be here 15 years from now?" and "What happens if the RAID card fails?" The latter can be fixed, but it's a pain and quite nerve wrecking. It's also money that would be better spent on your kid's college fund.
  3. Store your backups in the same place. Unlike your kids, it's best to always have one copy of your data somewhere completely different (e.g. at your office, another family member's place or a safe deposit box).

Some Reassurances. While I provide no guarantees, clients should take comfort that your photos are stored on two separate disks from the moment they are uploaded from the comfort of my home and eventually archived in a safe deposit box protected by advanced surveillance, security guards and a couple of pit bulls.



Backing Up Your Photos

Sometimes you want backup for taking care of the kids, but sometimes you have to think about backing up your data, specifically your precious photos.